Mumbai: There was a heavy movement in tribal rights activist and now deceased Stan Swamy's computer a day before his computer's hard disk was seized, US forensic firm Arsenal Consulting's report has found.
This was revealed at the press conference held by Mumbai Rises to Save Democracy, a forum of 20 civil society organisations formed for the release of those arrested in the Bhima-Koregaon case.
The US firm has studied clone copies of data recovered from Stan Swamy, Rona Wilson and Surendra Gadling's devices. Its report that was released recently found that incriminating files had been planted in Stan Swamy's computer. These were later cited as evidence by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against the accused.
Senior advocate Mihir Desai, one of the speakers at the event said there was "tremendous deletion" to remove tracks of planting a day before the octogenarian hard disk was seized in a raid on June 12, 2019.
Casting the doubt that the NIA was aware of the planting of incriminating data, he said that such deletion activity was not possible unless somebody had told them (those controlling the malware) to clear everything. He also remarked on the lack of curiosity on the part of the NIA on finding if indeed there was the planting of evidence.
A speaker at the event also pointed out the Arsenal report had found that 40 files that were planted in his computer were created in a very short time. "A human being would take time to write, create and copy. It is clear as all had time stamp of fraction of seconds difference," the speakers said, adding that the malware Trojan horse executed it (creation of files) and that Stan Swamy never accessed the files.
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